Hi,
I was hoping for some advice on how I could improve this car interior. I’m reasonably happy with it at the moment, but I still feel like there’s quite a lot of room for improvement. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve attached a photo of the car below the render. I’m not trying to match the lighting or materials of the photo in my render. Just looking to try and get it to a similar level. So any comments are welcome.
Cheers,
John
Photo:
It looks like the main difference between your interior and the photo is specular reflections.
Try adding or increasing your glossy reflections, and turn up the lighting to increase your specular highlights.
Hi! sweet interior
What Clifton said.. you need more contrast light vs shadow. Also looks a bit washed out, is it because of colormapping or maybe you’re just using too weak colors?
Nice work! 
Thanks for the comments. Both very helpful
I think it’s just slightly dull texture maps on the seats and lower dash that are causing it to look a bit washed out. I’ll brighten them up a bit in Photoshop and see if it makes things better.
I’ll post an update soon.
Cheers,
John
Hotter lights / different light positions.
Hm… lack of contrast I suppose…
i think what has been said before - another light or two to get more specular reflections
sweet so far tho 
as you can see there is two stong lights coming from left and right, which have defined difference between light and shadow area. Since its a studio light, they are most likely soft lights producing such soft reflections. Your render is flat in that regard, need volume. If you look close at the shift stick you will see the kind of lighting used in this scene. Try to mimic that. Also add some texture detail that would help. Stronger reflections in some areas may also help.
A nice HDRI (Dosch studios come to mind, but i may be off-track) in the reflection environment, and a slightly lighter and bluer plastic would probably do it, imo.
Extremely nice modelling and attention to detail there, anyways.
Confrabulations!
Lele
Are you certain your reference is a photo? Could be Burrows N. Visage’s work! I think your image is great, needs more “zing” though!
I’m pretty sure it’s a photo.
I’ve seen some very nice interiors from Burrows, but I don’t think this is one of them.
If you look at the Focus brochure, which must have been made about 3 years ago, I think it’s fairly easy to pick out which images are real and which are CG. It’s much harder with their more recent work though.
I’ll try an post an update in the next couple of hours.
Cheers,
John
Thanks for all the comments so far. I really appreciate it.
I’ve added a couple of light sources to increase the specular reflections in the scene, brightened up some of the cloth textures, and tried to add a bit more contrast. But there’s still room for improvement, so any comments gratefully received.
I’m not happy with the gearstick materials, and I think the extra lights have made the wingmirror way too bright and distracting, but if there are any other areas that aren’t up to scratch, please point them out.
Cheers,
John
looking better. waaay too much specular on your cloth seats though. I’d nix that.